some native songs, Mr. Philbrick, the General, and the
_Times_ reporter addressed them, and then one of the old darkies got
on the stage and in an ecstasy of obedience and gratitude exhorted
them to share his feelings, I believe.

For an hour and a half there was a general press for the hard
bread, herring, and molasses and water. When everything was
devoured, the superintendents rode up to "the Oaks,"--Pierce's
headquarters[49],--and had a collation. So much for Fourth of July. It
was strange and moving down here on South Carolina ground, with the
old flag waving above us, to tell a thousand slaves that they were
freemen,[50] that that flag was theirs, that our country now meant
their country, and to tell them how Northerners read the
Declaration--"All men are born free and equal." The people had a grand
time, they say, and seem really grateful for it. It was a new thing
for them, a Fourth of July for the negro. In old times they worked, if
with any difference, harder than usual, while their masters met and
feasted and drank.

The rest of this extract is an expression--which will be
followed later by many like it--of the sense that people in
the North were getting too complacent a notion of what had
been done and what could be done for the Sea Island negroes.

Pierce's report[51] has too much sugar in it. His statements are
facts, but facts with the silver lining out. The starving, naked
condition of the blacks was much exaggerated when we started to come
down here.

_July 25._ On the whole, affairs conduct themselves pretty quietly and
regularly. The cases of discipline are the most vexing and amusing. It
is a peculiar experience to be detective, policeman, judge, jury, and
jailer,--all at once,--sometimes in cases of assault and battery, and
general, plantation _squows_,--then in a divorce case,--last Sunday in
a whiskey-selling affair; a calf-murder is still on the docket.

The next letter is the first from C. P. W., who went to Port
Royal early in July, on the same steamer with Charles F.
Folsom of Harvard, '62, who is often mentioned in the
letters that follow, and with several other young
Massachusetts men who had volunteered as superintendents.

FROM C. P. W.

_Beaufort, July 7._ We got our luggage into the Mayflower and started
for this place [from Hilton Head] about six o'clock. It was droll
enough to find a party of Boston men taking a sail in the old Hingham
b